Chapter 3: Summer Rain
Vegeta was mortified. His lack of self-control had sent the heiress to startle, to shuffle back from him, wide-eyed and flinched in fear, an expression with which he was intimately familiar, having worn it himself more times than he could count. Perhaps Yamcha was right, and his true nature was impossible to circumvent, hopelessly genetic. More and more, it seemed the harder he tried to be the opposite, to channel his disquieted temper into an organized sport, he was still becoming his father.
Her suggestion of a movie, at the very least, would give him time to cool off, to relax in her presence, prove to them both he was capable of such a thing, and grow tired. Bulma told him to find one on-demand while she tiptoed up the stairs toward her bedroom to change into pajamas.
Scrolling through the endless selection that was laid out in alphabetical order, he'd barely gotten to the 'B's' before he grew annoyed by the endeavor and settled on Blow, a film he hadn't seen for a few years, but remembered being decent.
"Oh, I've never seen it, but I love Johnny Depp!" Bulma chirped as she skipped down the stairs into the living room in a pair of short-shorts and a thin, white tank top. She wasn't wearing a bra, and Vegeta quickly tore his eyes away from her nipples which showed hard through the sheer material of her shirt. Did she dress this way on purpose? His question was answered when she pounced onto the couch and shimmied up against him without any concept of personal space.
"Drink this," he said, grabbing his bottle of water from the coffee table.
After being out in the sun all day guzzling alcohol like some tailgating floozy, she was probably still drunk, and only proved it when she made a dramatic show of his request by sticking out her tongue at him as she unscrewed the cap before she guzzled the whole bottle in one go, letting half of its contents dribble from the corners of her lips and drip down her chin.
Vegeta ignored her to watch the opening credits, which hadn't finished rolling before the heiress was cuddling up to his side, wrapping her arms around one of his as she laid her head against his shoulder. Vegeta stiffened uncomfortably, his cheeks hot and flushed, but he couldn't push her off, not without reminding them both of his earlier outburst. He tried to abstract himself from reality, to focus on the film, but even after the first forty minutes, he couldn't manage to enforce a single nerve to unclench from rigor mortis with the girl pressed up against him, fidgeting restlessly. On top of it, she wouldn't stop talking, asking inane questions about a fairly straightforward plot that the prodigal genius was too drunk to follow.
"If you'd shut up and watch, you wouldn't have to ask questions," he chided.
Bulma huffed and scooted further down into the couch, her head slipping from where it'd been tenuously braced against his flexed arm to plop more comfortably, for her at least, in his lap. Vegeta feigned a kind of unaffected hubris, staring ahead at the screen, refusing to acknowledge the pretty head that squirmed in his lap. It only lasted so long before she was back to forcing him to pay her attention.
"Did you pick Blow because you want one?" she asked. Her face was turned up at him with a wicked grin smeared over her features.
Huh? Vegeta didn't understand what she meant and stared down at her blankly. Was she asking if he wanted to do drugs? Their parents were shameless enough about it that it wouldn't surprise him if she'd had the opportunity to test them. Hell, he even knew some of the hiding places where his own dad stashed contraband, and he would have flushed the shit too if he cared about the old man's well being enough to face the repercussions. His face puzzled down at her coy expression, hoping to gods it wasn't what she meant because he'd rather tear his brother out of bed right now and show up unannounced at home to meet whatever consequence awaited than pretend that shit was kosher.
But his misinterpretation of her meaning was quickly realized when Bulma brought her hand to the top of his swim trunks and yanked the waistband, nearly tearing them over his dick. What the fuck? Vegeta leapt from the couch in a red hot panic. All the blood that hadn't betrayed him completely still riotously leapt to pool across his face.
She was fucking laughing, and Vegeta cupped his hand over his shorts to hide his humiliation. Was she making fun of him too? Was this one of those things where a popular girl seduced the freak only to laugh the moment she'd proven she could get him aroused?
"What the fuck is wrong with you!? Why are you like this?" he shouted.
It was fucked up. He'd never asked to be here, and the fact that the entire day was spent defending himself from the psychological warfare of people who, even within the structured confines of their high school that suppressed their worst intentions were inexorably horrible, made it so much worse. Maybe they'd influenced her, but Vegeta suspected that, despite his memory and short moments where she seemed almost human, like when she'd asked about Tarble or stayed to help with the dishes, Bulma was inherently just as shitty as the rest.
"Kami, relax! I was just kidding!" Her laughter pittered out with a dull hiss, like the fire he'd smothered with a bucket of lake water; whatever fun she'd been having at his expense was over and muted to guilt. "Vegeta, come on, please don't be upset. I said I was kidding!" she pleaded at his back as he stormed off to bed.
Good, if she felt bad, he wasn't going to validate her crappy excuse for an apology. He didn't give a shit whether Bulma Briefs lived or died, much less cared to alleviate her mild sense of remorse. As much as he wanted her to stew in it, he knew she wouldn't. The moment she laid her pretty head against her silken pillows, she'd forget.
Angry as he was, he forced himself to remember that she didn't matter the way none of them mattered and was just another fleeting nuisance he was forced to endure in the moment. Less than one year stood between him and freedom. The moment he turned eighteen, he and his brother would be gone, somehow.
Falling asleep wasn't easy, not that it ever was, but especially now that it was raining, practically sideways, pelting against the windows. It fit the mood so well he wondered if he'd summoned it. Same as the rain, the bullshit from the day refused to let up the heavy beat of his pulse as it forced him, the same way his father's outbursts always forced him to realistically calculate his future.
Fucking assholes. It's not like he was trying to be strange and aloof. He just was. He couldn't identify with any of them even if he wanted to because, for him, there were far more important things to worry about than being popular. Figuring out his future was paramount to making friends, especially ones as shitty as Yamcha, Tien, Launch, and as he was beginning to suspect, Bulma too. People like that were a waste of time. Yet knowing it didn't make their insults hurt any less.
Even if those idiots barely scraped by in school, their parents were alumni at the best universities and would get them accepted to any of them. And despite that he was technically in the same position, he didn't want it, and not because getting into an Ivy League thanks to his name and father's affluence was objectively pathetic, and not even because Vegeta didn't want to owe his old man anything, not ever. He had other plans, ones that kept him awake on nights like this, plotting and worrying and hoping.
He'd graduate a year from now, a legal adult with a piece of paper that gave him some credence in the job market. Though how he'd get one, even far away from home, without his father using his extensive resources to track him and Tarble down was another weighty obstacle. A part of him couldn't see how, by playing under the radar without throwing his entire family into a nationwide scandal, he could get away with leaving unless he changed their names or moved to another country or both.
He tossed and turned, trying to push down the feelings that the stormy rain only served to amplify, when the door creaked open, spilling a thin strip of light from the hallway. For a fleeting moment, he dreaded the idea that it was Bulma come to argue, beg forgiveness, or flirt shamelessly under the guise of either. But the tiny silhouette that tiptoed across the floor to his bedside was a welcome relief.
"What's up T? Can't sleep?"
The boy shook his head and pointed toward the open bedroom door.
"Kat wet the bed," he told him.
Vegeta groaned, knowing that he'd be the one to clean the mess up in the morning.
"Come on." He sat up to help Tarble remove his soiled pajamas and change into one of Vegeta's t-shirts that looked like an oversized nightgown with the way the collar hung off his narrow shoulders and was long enough to cover his knees.
Even more so than Vegeta, Tarble was a small kid. He was born almost ten weeks prematurely in an emergency c-section when their mother came down with preeclampsia. At least that was the official story. Her tumble down the stairs induced labor far too soon, and perhaps was the initial trigger that resulted with her passing away the next morning. Tarble's life for many weeks after was touch and go, stuck in NICU in an incubator without anyone sane enough to visit.
Both Vegeta and his father were suddenly thrust into abject mourning for the woman who, they didn't realize at the time, had been their lynchpin. Their father was never an openly loving person, not like their mother was. He was a career politician who's entire identity was formed by the accolades of his power. He made an exception for her, lowered his ego in small doses through small gestures that were just enough to keep her from divorcing him, from taking Vegeta, cutting town, and causing a scandal that would irreparably damage his potential. A part of Vegeta wished she'd had the balls to do it, but the other part of him was glad she didn't because Tarble wouldn't exist otherwise. The fact that she threatened as much amplified his respect for her, now that he was attempting the same drastic feat, especially because, unlike her, he didn't even love the guy, which made the severity of her stakes all the more noteworthy.
The man was two-faced. What the electorate saw was a far different person than the one Vegeta knew behind closed doors. To most people that had the displeasure of working with him—unless they were particularly useful or he was on camera—his father was ruthless and insensate, so focused on his own power trip that he'd mow down anyone and anything in his path, even his own campaign platforms, shamelessly thwarting the people who voted for him, and most especially, his own fucking children just to gain another leg up the rung.
After their mother passed, the man became a caricature of his worst qualities. He was hopelessly depressed and took to drinking to fill the void she left behind. Vegeta suspected that he blamed the baby for her death. At first, he did too, but not to the same extent as his father who never held Tarble, not once, and even to this day, barely spoke to the boy. After their mother died, his father threw himself into campaigning for another election, which of course, without his wife's stabilizing presence had become even more crutched by seedy favors, late night indulgence and frivolous parties. What was already a problem before she'd gone, had become an uninhibited nightmare that Vegeta himself absorbed the brunt of when he'd come home drunk and likely coming down to face the unbearable responsibility of his sons.
At first, their father hired a nanny to care for them, but the nanny was lazy and neglectful, letting the baby cry through the night, leaving him hungry and soiled. Vegeta, at eleven years old, was the one who got up to change his diapers, to feed him formula at all hours of the day and night, to rock him back to sleep. Once the nanny was let go for stealing, his father never hired another one, assuming that Vegeta was capable of caring for his brother himself. He'd go to daycare when Vegeta was back in school, but the rest of it, every morning, every night, every weekend, every spring and winter break, and every summer for six years, Vegeta cared for him. While he hated being responsible for Tarble the first few years that were marked by crying and illness after illness, now, more than ever, he was glad for it. He didn't trust anyone else to the job.
The kid, despite always being so sickly and weak, never let his shortcomings affect his perpetual good mood. It was like he didn't know he was any different, that he was missing anything at all. He never knew that he had a mother once upon a time, and not once did he even ask about her. Nor did he seem to understand that their father was a heartless asshole who never gave him an ounce of love or care. The man had probably spoken less than ten words to the boy his whole six years of life, yet Tarble didn't seem to be affected by it, like that was just the way of things. He was pure and sweet, and Vegeta was determined to keep him that way, to protect him and never let anyone make him feel like he was anything less. Vegeta knew questions about their parents would be asked eventually, and he just hoped he would find the right words when that day came.
The kid climbed into bed, and Vegeta wrapped an arm around his tiny frame, listening to the steady thud of his heartbeat and the summer rain that let up just as they fell asleep.